Every time you real­ize how bad­ly the media man­gles some­thing you know about, you won­der how well they are report­ing every­thing else.

The announce­ment that a stat­ue of Gand­hi would be placed in Par­lia­ment Square near that of Win­ston Churchill unleashed a bar­rage of igno­rance. Would Churchill wish to share space with his “one­time neme­sis”?

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press quot­ed Churchill’s famous “half-naked fakir” crack (inac­cu­rate­ly), and said he called Gand­hi a “mid­dling lawyer.” (Churchill’s term was “Mid­dle Tem­ple lawyer,” some­thing else entire­ly.)

The Wall Street Jour­nal wor­ried that Par­lia­ment Square also includes a stat­ue of Jan Smuts, “a prime min­is­ter of South Africa in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry who favored seg­re­ga­tion.”